God in Gotham: 12 Christians leading New York’s spiritual renaissance

Jonathan Merritt

In New York City, everything is always changing all time. From the skyline to the weather to transient residents jumping from neighborhood to neighborhood trying to find the right mix of price, size and location, the city is perpetually in flux.

But the Big Apple is experiencing a surprising kind of change—the religious kind—as more Christian communities and leaders are taking root and flourishing there.

New York City is not known as a particularly religious place. Though Gallup reports an above average population of Catholics and Jews, the state of New York is well below average for Protestants and other non-Catholic Christians.

But according to Barna Research’s survey of more that 3,400 residents in the New York media market, New York City is more spiritually active today than in the late 1990s or even 2001 in the wake of 9/11. Barna reports that church attendance is increasing, the number of “unchurched” residents is decreasing, and the number of “born again” Christians is on the rise, surging from 20% in the late 1990s to 32% today.

Read more at http://jonathanmerritt.religionnews.com/2013/10/17/new-york-christian-renaissance/